Jeff Harbert

Cutting Failure Down to Size

jeffharbert — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:21:32 +0000

People are afraid of failure because the word itself comes with an image of burned down houses, living in a van by the river, not getting the girl (or guy), being alone, and getting fired.

Stop that. The vast majority of the time, failures are immediately followed by renewed effort and success. Don’t believe me? Let’s go through a few examples.

You’re driving through a new part of town and take a wrong turn. What do you do? You turn around and try again.

You’re making a pot roast for the first time and it comes out a lump of charcoal. What do you do? Go out for pizza, and remember next time to check the roast more often.

You’re sitting down at a coffee shop and you spill your coffee. What do you do? Get the mess cleaned up and get another coffee.

These are admittedly small things, but that’s just the point – we fail at lots of things every single day, yet all we have to do is try again. And the chances are pretty good that you won’t fail a second time.

Let me share with you a recent experience. Last weekend a pinhole leak developed in the 50+ year old plumbing in our basement. The only plumbing work I’d ever done prior to this was replacing a broken water shutoff valve under a toilet. I don’t like to hire people to do things I can do myself, so I did some quick research online about how to fix the problem and got down to business.

I ran up to Home Depot and got the parts I needed. I also got assistance from a Home Depot employee, making sure I had a decent grasp of what needed to be done. I got home, turned off the water, drained the plumbing, cut the pipes where they needed to be cut, assembled the parts I’d bought at Home Depot, hooked everything back up, and turned the water back on.

And… leaks. I had a couple of good-sized leaks in the two threaded fittings I used that were even worse than the original pinhole leak. I was a bit embarrassed by this – there were only two threaded fittings and I didn’t get either one right. As someone who likes working with his hands, this was definitely a failure.

I again turned the water off, drained the plumbing, removed the parts I’d added, reworked the threaded joints (this time with more teflon tape than I’d used before), reassembled everything, etc, etc.

The second time, nothing leaked.

What was I afraid of before I started? I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to repair the leak and would end up having to call a plumber. I was afraid of wasting water because of having to re-drain the house plumbing after every attempt. I was afraid of buying the wrong parts and having to make multiple trips to Home Depot. All very small things, really. None of them were going to cost me the house or land me in the hospital. If I had been afraid of the big possibility that comes to mind when you think of a water leak, flooding the basement, I might never have tried. But I knew enough – that I had to turn off our well pump since the leak was before the main water shutoff valve – to know that this big thing wasn’t really a possibility at all. All that was in front of me were small things.

Now, not only is the leak gone, but some old plumbing with questionable joints (where the pinhole leaked started, actually) has been removed entirely, a properly-sized shutoff valve installed, which lead to better water pressure (the previous one was actually undersized, causing a reduction in water flow), and a corner of the basement that was previously unusable is now usable because of the improvements I made while doing the repair – a totally unexpected benefit.

Embrace the possibility of failure. Don’t be afraid of it. Imagine the things you’ll accomplish.

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Old School + New Tech

jeffharbert — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 15:31:02 +0000

The battery in one of my cars had gotten deeply discharged and wouldn’t hold a charge to save its life. I’d charge it up, put the battery back in the car, and the starter would only make a little snick as I turned the key. Holy worn out battery, Batman.

I picked up a battery desulfator from Northern Tool. A great idea, I thought. However, this “smart” charger did a little too much thinking of its own. When I hooked it up it registered less than three volts in the battery and thus would not begin charging. What to do?

An experiment, that’s what. I hooked up my old-school “dumb” charger, set to the low 2 amp setting, and let it feed the battery for a couple of days. Then I switched to the desulfator. Every other day for ten days I switched between the two. Today the “desulfated” indicator light on the smart charger was no longer lit up. Progress. I popped the battery back in the car and it started on the first try. The crank was nice and strong, too, not weak at all.

I’m pleased. Now I have three other batteries to attempt to recover.

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I Found My Garage

jeffharbert — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 01:20:31 +0000

No, not in the “it was filled with junk and I cleaned it out” kinda way – I found the one I want to build! I’ve put hours and hours of thought into what I want in a garage, going through revision after revision. Each time I’d try to find something online that’s close to what I wanted. I’ve finally found something that’s almost perfect:

24×30ft, large enough for room at the back for a vehicle turned sideways, gambrel roof, and a shed dormer on one side. The only modifications I’d want to make are:

Fill the dormer wall with windows
Move the man door to the left corner, which will place it in front of the stairs to the loft
Remove the upper floor cargo door
Remove the right hand garage door
Move the left garage door to the right about two feet
Add short windows high up on the long wall that the man door is on
Dump the cupola. Not a fan of those.

Put a 2-car parking pad in front with a one-car carport on the right side and it’d be perfect. The long side with the dormer will be the south facing wall. The lower wall will have solar air heaters similar to this one: http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/SpaceHeating/solar_barn_project.htm

The bay in front of the lone car door will have a flush-mounted BendPak P-6F lift. I was thinking I’d get a two-post lift, but after thinking it through decided that the lower lift height of the P-6F would suit my needs just fine. It also doesn’t require a huge ceiling height, which will make the garage less expensive to build.

The lower floor will obviously be shop space for my wood, metal, and automotive work. There will be no normal windows on the bottom floor, just some short windows high up on the south wall for good natural light. Having uninterrupted wall space will maximize bench & tool layout possibilities, and be more secure as well. The upper floor will serve multiple purposes – extra storage, a home gym, relaxing space, and one end of the dormer will be partitioned off for an office.

Here’s the website where I found this plan: http://www.coolhouseplans.com/details.html?pid=chp-43119&FoundID=2&sid=chp1

I’m thinking barn red with a white standing seam metal roof and matching white trim.

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So Much for Staying Current

jeffharbert — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 01:35:58 +0000

The timecard website of a recruiting company I worked for briefly last week has a message on it that suggests using Internet Explorer 6, and the page you access to change your password is not secured with SSL. You would think that a technical recruiting company would be more on top of things than that.

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We got about eight inches

jeffharbert — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 15:44:33 +0000

Posted via email from Jeff Harbert’s Posterous

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How I Pronounce the Year

jeffharbert — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:54:16 +0000

This is just a fluff post, not meant to be taken seriously.

I say 2010 as ‘Two-Thousand Ten.’ No ‘and.’ It’s a minor pet peeve when someone says ‘Twenty Ten.’ It just doesn’t sound right. After all, no one said ‘Twenty Oh-Nine’ for the year 2009, did they? No. So why use that format for 2010? Also, was 1010 ‘Ten Ten?’ No, it was ‘One-Thousand Ten.’

This is strictly a ‘thousand’ thing. 1999 was ‘Nineteen Ninety-Nine.’ 2009 was ‘Two-Thousand Nine.’ 2109 will probably be ‘Twenty-One Oh-Nine’ rather than ‘Twenty-One Nine.’

So now you know how to say the year correctly.

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My Thoughts on the iPad

jeffharbert — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:30:54 +0000

Buzz has it that it’s nothing more than a larger iPhone or iPod Touch (for brevity, from here on I’ll just refer to the iPhone), and this is both unsurprising and very limiting. An iPhone is a great supplement to a desktop or laptop. With wifi and cellular connectivity it’s great for checking email, light web surfing – anything that doesn’t require long stretches at a keyboard.

The iPad is too large to replace an iPhone. The netbook market has been moving to steadily larger screen sizes, which makes the 9.7 inch screen of the iPad questionable in its appeal. Lastly, there is no keyboard, making this essentially a small netbook without a keyboard. Worse, however, is the lack of USB ports, memory card slots, and a webcam. The lack of these things severely limits the iPad’s usability. Apple is pushing this as a web device, but it has no ability of publishing anything to the web except text. You can’t produce anything with it, as you can with an iPhone.

The original iPod and the iPhone were both incredible successes, and deservedly so, because their user interfaces were amazing well-designed for their intended functions. However, the market has shown time and again that people don’t care for larger, keyboard-less designs. There have been Windows-based tablet laptops available for years. There’s a reason they don’t sell very well – people don’t like using devices that large without a keyboard. (Please, no Mac vs PC fanboi crap.) Most people who buy a convertible tablet end up using it strictly as a laptop – read: using it with the keyboard rather than without it.

An iPad would make a perfect iTunes device. But then, so does most any netbook on the market, and they’re both less expensive than an iPad (for the most part) and full-fledged computers besides. From a hardware standpoint, the iPad is severely lacking. Great computers need more than a great UI.

My prediction: We won’t see a second-generation iPad.

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My Grandparents

jeffharbert — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 01:47:28 +0000

I barely knew my grandparents growing up. Both my parents grew up in the southeastern corner of Colorado, where my father’s parents remained until they died. My mother’s parents only lived about an hour and a half away from the first house I grew up in, and while we visited every three or four months there just wasn’t a great connection for me. I was very young at the time, quite a bit younger than my two brothers.

I have no substantial memories of my grandmothers. I did visit Lamar, my dad’s home town, during Thanksgiving 1986. All I remember about my dad’s mom is that she was there. This is actually the only memory I have at all about her.

It’s largely the same story about my mom’s mom – even though I saw her much more often, all I can recall is that she was there.

My dad’s dad did visit us twice in California, once when I was maybe eight years old, and again about ten years later, after my parents had divorced and my dad had remarried. This is the only significant thing I can remember about my dad’s dad: There’s a picture – I am not in it though I was present for the taking – of four generations of Harbert men: My grandfather, my father, my brother, and my brother’s infant son. It’s the only time in Harbert history that four generations have been together.

If you would, please close your eyes for a moment and imagine the awe this experience fills me with to this day, twenty-five years later.

I have two distinct memories of my mom’s dad, and one of the memories isn’t even mine, it belongs to my oldest brother.

My own memory is pretty insignificant. We were having dinner one night at my mother’s parents’ house. I reached for the salt and my grandfather said, “Careful, it flows pretty easy.” I tipped the salt shaker over my food and, sure enough, way more salt than I wanted came out of the shaker lid. To this day, every time I shake a shaker of salt I remember my grandfather’s words.

My brother’s memory: My mom’s mom had died, and my grandfather was living alone. My oldest brother went over to visit one day. Grandpa wanted to mow the lawn, so he got out the mower and got started. After a short while, my brother went outside and tried to take over the chore from my grandfather. Grandpa was having none of it and wanted to finish. My brother insisted, Grandpa pushed back… Rinse, repeat, until my grandfather finally threw up his hands and yelled, “Fine! Fuck it!” and stormed back inside the house.

Understand, my grandfather rarely cussed, and he never, ever used the F word.

Here was a man who wanted to be feel useful, trying to do something normal after the death of his wife. I wasn’t there that day, but dammit I wish I had been.

And that sums up how I feel about my grandparents – Even though I was mostly too young to help or know what to do or even appreciate who and what they were, I wish I’d been there.

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Pleasant Surprise

jeffharbert — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 21:16:17 +0000

I bought my 2000 Protégé ES used in June 2007. It had the factory 15" alloys and BFGoodrich g-Force Sport in the stock 195/55-15 size. I’ve been really impressed with the tires. Two of them are nearing the wear bars, so I’ve been thinking about new wheels and tires. I’ve decided to stay with 15-inchers instead of going with a plus-1 or -2 upgrade. I want to keep things pretty light and reduce unsprung weight if possible. I don’t push the car hard enough on public roads to need/justify the increased grip a wider tire would get me. I have plenty of fun with the 195s.

I’ve been looking at wheels on the Tire Rack’s website. One great thing Tire Rack does is show you the weights of most of their wheels and tires. It occurred to me that I didn’t know how much my factory wheels weighed, though I assumed they were on the heavy side. I was thinking 17-18lbs apiece. I have snows on the car currently, so I took the bathroom scale outside to weigh one of the wheels and tires.

According to the Tire Rack’s website, my tires weigh 20lbs each. Weigh the combo, subtract the tire weight, and you have the weight of the wheel, right?

I’m a bit blown away – my wheels only weigh 14lbs. Nearly all the wheels I like and would consider buying are 2-4lbs heavier than my factory wheels. Forget that. (I weighed it three times, once with me holding it, to make sure I wasn’t imagining things.)

So, guess who doesn’t have to spend $400-ish on new wheels? (Leaves more money to build a shop later this year…)

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Stuff About Me, and Opinions

jeffharbert — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 19:30:03 +0000

I am generally wary of C-level people because I’ve seen firsthand how little accountability there is for executives. Trust is earned and not given, etc. That said, I’ve worked with some truly amazing executives in my career. (Related: I believe this lack of accountability is the single largest flaw in American capitalism.)

I am somewhat noise-phobic. I have days when noise doesn’t bother me much. On my worst days an unexpected loud noise makes me want to run and hide, literally. For some reason mornings are worse than the rest of the day. My worst day ever was waiting for a concert to start in Seattle during Seafair. I had a panic attack and started running. I’ve blacked out the run – I don’t remember it at all. I ‘woke up’ after about five minutes, about fifteen blocks away. Fortunately, that’s the only panic attack I’ve ever had.

I don’t think the real time web is nearly as important as some people make it out to be. Real-time is great for conferences and breaking news, but that’s about it.

I love cars and trucks and driving. I also think motor vehicles are first and foremost deadly weapons and that driver training should reflect this fact. How strongly do I feel about this? I think anyone who takes a life while driving under the influence should go to jail for the rest of theirs.

Also on the subject of vehicles, I think using a large truck or SUV for a daily commute is utterly ridiculous for the vast majority of people.

One last thing about vehicles and driving: Almost 3000 people were killed on September 11, 2001. About the same number of people are killed every single month on America’s roads. From a Federal policy standpoint, why don’t we have a War on Bad Drivers?

I think this recession we’re in is much more than a recession. Certainly not a depression (not even close) but definitely a large-scale correction. I’m seeing a rise in entrepreneurialism, and once this correction is over we’ll see that most of the jobs that have been lost have moved to new, small, nimble businesses. (Related: There are ten times as many books about being a good employee as there are about entrepreneurialism. This is the exact opposite of how it should be.)

I don’t like cooked vegetables. No, not even that one. Corn and potatoes aren’t vegetables, they’re starches.

I bought my first domain, jeffharbert.com, in February 2000.

I don’t like horror movies.

I think reality TV, in fact popular culture in general, is pretty lame. Yes, including Harry Potter, Twilight, zombies, and dinosaurs.

I’m a huge Star Trek fan. My favorite character is the Doctor from Voyager. My least favorite character is Jonathan Archer from Enterprise. My favorite series is DS9, but only by a lobe.

On the subject of our political leadership: Republicans are hypocrites. They’ve dropped nearly every single traditional conservative ideal. Small government, fiscal discipline, and personal responsibility have been utterly abandoned. They’re pro-life but against universal health care, as if the right to life (a phrase the right loves to use) ends as soon as you’re born. They’re no longer conservatives, they’re authoritarians. Democrats, for their part, have forgotten what it’s like to have an original idea or a spine, and they rarely do what they say they’ll do. Their promises are meaningless. Neither party serves the people who vote for them, they serve corporate interests.

In the 3rd grade I had a 10th grade reading level.

USA Today is written at the 6th grade level. The Wall Street Journal, the 8th. I was both deeply disappointed and utterly unsurprised when I found this out.

I despise advertising. I am a marketer/advertiser’s worst nightmare. I’m a huge fan of Seth Godin and his "permission, not interruption" approach to marketing.

I love the convenience of big cities – Seattle will always be my adopted home town – but I’m a country boy at heart. (Related: We just bought a house in the country and I’m loving the hell out of it!)

I’ve driven across the US twice, both times from Seattle to North Carolina.

I’m a huge process improvement nerd, and I’m very good at it. PI can be applied to nearly everything – cooking, traveling, mowing the lawn, you name it.

I generally dislike corporate-speak.

I looked into starting my own record label in 1988 or so.

I will never again drive the stretch of I-95 between DC and Baltimore. Ever. It has the worst traffic I’ve ever seen, and this is coming from someone who lived in Seattle for ten years.

Red lights piss me off. Specifically, any intersection that makes me stop pisses me off. Everything should be overpasses and cloverleafs.

Some people have a fascination with anything deep-fried. I am not one of them.

I won first place in a Halloween costume contest when I was in the 4th grade. The costume was of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and it was made almost entirely of green paper napkins stapled together.

I despise textspeak.

I’m a big fan of DIY skills, even simple ones. I must confess that I look a bit askance at people who can’t change their own oil.

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